Friday, July 14, 2017

The Death of a Cuban Doctor in Ciudad Tiuna, Caracas

The Death of a Cuban Doctor in Ciudad Tiuna, Caracas / Juan Juan Almeida

Juan Juan Almeida, 19 June 2017 — Teresa Sulien Castillo Sotto, a
27-year-old Cuban doctor born in Bayamo, died due to multiple fractures
and traumatic brain injury on the night of Tuesday 13 June, at 10:20 PM,
after jumping off the 8th floor of the C-05 building of Ciudad Tiuna in
Tiuna Fort.

"It's a delicate issue that they are treating with great tact and major
caution," comments a member of the National Coordinating Department
(COOR), which, along with the National Directorate of the Cuban Medical
Mission in Venezuela (MMCVEN), located in the Crillon Hotel. "We are
talking about the death of a cooperating doctor within a military
community where the only ones who enter are Cubans who are linked to
some military person, people with overwhelming confidence, cases that
call for control, or some of the collaborators who are related to Cuban
leaders."

Tiuna Fort is an enormous military installation, the most important in
Caracas, and also in Venezuela which, among other things, is the
headquarters of the Ministry of People's Power, the General Command of
the Army, the official residence of the vice president, and sports,
cultural and financial facilities. It was in this urban complex where,
in apartment 10-F, the young Cuban doctor lived.

Several officials from the Homicide Division of the Scientific, Penal
and Criminal Investigations Corps (CICPC) came to the scene of the
tragedy. The prevailing narrative is that Teresa made the tragic
decision to kill herself because she found, on the cellphone of her
husband, also a Cuban doctor, compromising text messages involving
another woman. However, on her personal profile on Facebook, the
deceased young woman appears as single.

That night, troops from the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service
(SEBIN) and Cuban officials who have not been identified, put Teresa's
body in a van, took it to the morgue and did not allow members of the
CICPC to preserve the scene of the tragedy nor to collect expert evidence.

The next day, Wednesday, three Cuban citizens came to the morgue in cars
with official plates with the intention to accelerate the paperwork to
collect the cadaver of the Cuban doctor. They accomplished this the same
day and at four in the afternoon, after establishing contact with high
level officials of the Bolivarian government and the representatives
from the Cuban embassy.

"Normally what happens," my interlocutor continued to explain, "they
close the box in the morgue and send it to Maiquetia [the International
Airport]. There, they finish the paperwork, and with the first flight
they head to Cuban, accompanied by two officials dispatching the coffin
and then the family members. In extreme or strange situations, the
deceased is simply buried and they don't even allow them to hold a funeral."

"What they don't want to reveal," my informer breathes deeply and adds,
in a tone appropriate to the shocking confession, "is that Teresa
maintained a close relationship with a military man, an official with
the National Guard who was captured by SEBIN for being involved with the
right and the opposition marches against chavismo. They used the girl as
an informer, she couldn't refuse, because it would mean cancelling her
mission, expulsion, threats and a ton of other things. She felt cornered
with no alternative. She couldn't do anything other than betray her
friend and, in an act of honor, with a certain touch of ethics, she
committed suicide, or she was pushed to suicide."

The body is already in Cuba, having left on Thursday the 15th in an A320
airplane of Cuban Aviation on the Caracas-Havana route.